Reunion Nurtures Friendships That Have Long Endured

Sixty-seven years after calling their first meeting to order, members of the Debutantes of Manual Arts High School convened their club once more on Friday.

“Let’s see if we recognize anyone,” Thelma Kobey Rosenblum said nervously as familiar figures walked through the West Hollywood restaurant’s front door.

“Miriam! Alice! Gertie!” exclaimed Rosenblum, of Laguna Woods, answering her own question.

There were hugs all around as Miriam Gribs Wexler, Alice Goldenson Eisenberg and Gertrude Bay Isaacs were reunited with former classmates whose friendship was forged in the Great Depression and sharpened in World War II.

“I haven’t seen some of these people in 40 years,” marveled Lynn Goodman Bloom of Beverly Hills.

“I’m having a little difficulty recognizing people. Everyone seems to have changed,” agreed Frances Bishop Weiss of Studio City.

No wonder, replied Wexler, of West Los Angeles. “I’ve had my hair long, I’ve had it short. I’ve had it every color in the rainbow. My hairdresser finally said to let it go natural.”

One by one, the surviving members of the Debutantes arrived at the Hamburger Hamlet. Isaacs from Portland, Sylvia Gardasky Becker from San Bernardino,

Eisenberg from West Los Angeles.

There were 20 members at the club’s peak in 1935. The high school girls met weekly at each other’s homes in South-Central Los Angeles to plan dances and outings to the beach in the summer and to the mountain snow in the winter.

Their meetings continued through the 1930s and part of the ‘40s, until the girls married and moved away. Reunions after that were sporadic: The most recent gathering of the Debutantes was eight years ago.

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The minutes of their meeting of Sept. 26, 1940, tell of a more innocent time in Los Angeles.

“A correction in last week’s minutes was that the dance was to be called ‘informal’ instead of ‘slash,’ ” reads the neatly typed, yellowing report. “Under old business it was announced we could get the hall for our dance for $5 on Sunday and $7.50 on Friday night. Alice was to call back and make definite arrangements to hire the hall for Sunday as well as make inquiry about a Victrola machine.”

The girls staged dances to raise money for charity, charging 50 cents admission. Teenagers from all over were welcome. Sometimes the turnout was enough for the Debutantes to hire a real band, like the Manny Harmon Orchestra.

“Growing up in L.A. was wonderful,” Weiss said.

“You could start on Broadway and Olympic and drive all the way to the beach without stopping once,” added Wexler.

“You could get your driver’s license at 14. I had mine. Sadie Konig used to tell the story of how she’d see me driving down the street and I was so short I’d have to look through the steering wheel to see,” recounted Rosenblum.

The teenage girls never let the Great Depression get them down, even though each had to go to work after high school instead of on to college, Eisenberg said.

“We named the group the Debutantes so people would think we had more money than we had,” she said.

“We had delusions of grandeur,” added Wexler with a laugh.

Some nights the girls would gather at the home of a member, flip off the lights and just talk.

“We’d sit in a group and ‘correct’ each other’s habits” and critique boyfriends, Rosenblum said. “We’d say things like one of us was wearing too much makeup. It was our first therapy session--except none of us knew it at the time.”

As the years passed and members of the Debutantes began marrying, the beaus came under closer scrutiny.

“My husband always said he had to pass muster with the Debutantes before we could get married,” Wexler said.

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There were some sad items of business at Friday’s meeting. There was an update on Becker’s recovery from a stroke. There was the report of Sadie Konig’s death last month. There was wonder over the whereabouts of a missing Debutante, Mildred Polon Friedman.

But there was also plenty of talk about grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And about how naive they were as young girls, contrasted with the youth of today.

“When I told my 14-year-old granddaughter we never talked about sex or even said the word, she was shocked,” Rosenblum said.

Isaacs believes that the Debutantes’ good health is due to the fact that none of them smoked as teenagers.

They made plans to get together the next time Isaacs comes down from Portland to visit her family.

“Why have we stayed in touch? Because we all liked each other,” Weiss said.

“We were all friends. We all had the same boyfriends. We all used to date the same boys.”

Isaacs said they were lucky to have been teenagers in the 1930s. And they’re fortunate to be in their 80s today.

“I think Father Time has treated us pretty good,” she said. “I feel lucky to be here. Lucky to have these friends.”